


Boom Town

by Syntax



Series: 50k Challenge Oneshots [8]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, Dream No More Ending (Hollow Knight), Elderbug dealing with everyone moving into town over the events of the game, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:33:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22624855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syntax/pseuds/Syntax
Summary: Sometimes he thought perhaps he would fade away with this town.  Then, little by little, bugs started trickling into the empty houses.
Series: 50k Challenge Oneshots [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1627744
Comments: 14
Kudos: 173





	Boom Town

Sometimes he wondered who it was that first started calling him by the moniker of "Elderbug": the children that hatched and aged and eventually left Dirthmouth all through out his life, or himself, speaking to them. Certainly it was an accurate name. He was a bug, rather than a snail or a mosskin or any of the other races that were said to haunt the kingdom of Hallownest, and he was quite elderly. Perhaps as the years went on and the population of Dirthmouth thinned out, he kept to the name because it was all he had left of the bright-eyed bugs that he had once seen in the houses so close to his own.

It was a deeply lonely thing, realizing that you were the only one left still living in the place of your birth. He had to wonder, sometimes, how lonely the town would become when he finally passed.

The day that a lone traveler had come into town, he'd scarcely believed it. On occasion Dirtmouth still received the odd passer-through seeking to make their fortune down the well and the kingdom that lie beyond it, but usually those foolhardy bugs came from the north or south. This one had arrived from the west, and as far as Elderbug could recall there were only cliffs in that direction. They stopped to listen to his warnings and then headed down the well anyways, and Elderbug honestly figured that would be the last he ever saw of them.

Then they came back up the well with a small map clutched in their claws, and a day or two later came a permanent resident to Dirtmouth selling just the sort of supplies needed to add to such a map.

Things kind of continued on in a similar vein from there. Every few days or so someone would arrive into town, either from the north or south (but never the west) or coming up from the well, and they would pick out an empty house and make a home for themselves there. First was the cartographer's wife minding a shop for her errant husband. Then was the general store owner, an odd fly with an enormous travel pack who evidently remembered not a whit of whatever adventures he'd had in the old kingdom. Then the Stag Station had opened up. And in the midst of all this, the first traveler, a scrawny thing smaller than even his own grandgrubs had been before they left, would come into town every so often to visit the steadily opening shops or nap on the town benches or go to see Elderbug himself and soak up whatever it was that he had to say like a cloth soaks up water.

It was—strange, for lack of a better word. Unexpected. Exhilarating. Dreamlike. Worrisome.

A dear little beetle arrived up the well one day with stars in her eyes and pep in her step, rushing to the cartographer's shop for parchment and pen and rushing off into the house next door to write and write. She'd met her Pale Prince somewhere down in the ruins of the old kingdom, he had to wager, but Elderbug worried about the possibility that she would try going back down to see the object of her affections again and get seriously hurt. Or worse.

Iselda, the cartographer's wife, spent countless lonely days without her husband Cornifer, seeing him only when he returned to provide a map of whatever area he had explored most recently and then diving back down the well to put his life at risk for the sake of a job. Elderbug couldn't help but worry about the two of them as well. Would there be a time where Cornifer didn't return from the well? Would there be a time when Iselda disappeared to go find him?

The keeper of the general store had an air about him like he could handle himself in a fight, and even the first little traveler whose name he had yet to learn seemed more than capable of braving whatever horrors that the Depths of Hallownest had to offer, but still Elderbug worried about them. They might be able to survive hundreds upon hundreds of trips down the well, but any one of those trips could be their last.

And on top of all his worries for the residents of Dirtmouth, there was a steadily growing problem with Dirtmouth itself that chilled him down to the very core. A strange scent was wafting up from the well into old Hallownest that only seemed to grow stronger and stronger as the days went by. Elderbug had no idea whatever it could be, but anything that could produce such a strong reek of fruit and rot could not possibly be good for a bug to breathe in.

He spent his days meandering around town and checking up on everyone, as much to calm his nerves as to actually verify that everyone was getting along well. It was strange how much living with other bugs again had changed his daily routine. What little hobbies Elderbug had once filled his empty days with didn't seem nearly as engrossing anymore now that there were other people to look after.

But thankfully, nothing seemed to go horribly wrong as the days passed. The stench from the bottom of the well kept getting stronger, but the little traveler that went down there so often kept coming back none worse for the wear, as did Cornifer. The traveler even brought a beautiful flower for him from Hallownest's depth in thanks for his advice.

Next to his sweetheart accepting his love and his children first being hatched, that was quite possibly the happiest moment of Elderbug's life. Never, in all of his days, did he think that anyone actually appreciated what it was that he had to say. He treasured that flower dearly. Even now it was still tucked into his shell.

The days dragged and dragged and the reek of sweetness and rot coming from the well only grew stronger and stronger. But when the morning came that he thought he might need to finally speak with the other residents of town to consider evacuating, it stopped. The well smelled better than it had in weeks when he awoke that morning and the scent only grew clearer and clearer as the day progressed. It was remarkable. It seemed that overnight whatever it was that had been fouling up the dead kingdom below their feet had suddenly been purged. And he had no idea why.

Although—when the first little traveler came into town for the last time a few days later to finally pick out a house to stay in, bringing with them a rather tall fellow who beared a striking resemblance to their smaller companion, and a rather ascetic spider who referred to both of them as her siblings with a tone that as as much exasperated as it was affectionate, Elderbug thought that perhaps he could hazard a guess.


End file.
